Vinegar and Oil

In my mother’s second house, she has a pantry which she fills with staples one might refer to as traditionally southern. These staples include, Dixie crystal sugar, arm and hammer baking soda, and a large, healthy supply of vinegar. Rarely have I ever not seen vinegar in the household, and my mother gets this from my grandmother who swore by traditional things, including mason jars (a kind of Antebellum Tupper-ware container perfect for sealing many types of foods) and good old fashioned mop heads for cleaning.

My mother’s second house seemed even more like my grandmother’s house, for over the archway to the pantry was a newly framed picture of my grandmother. If any part of my grandmother’s house was particularly her domain it was the pantry, and us foolish males and mortals were nowhere near as home as she was in the pantry, the intersection between cooking and cleaning.

My Grandmother’s world seemed utterly mundane and insignificant when I was younger, but as I look through my mother’s pantry in her retirement years, the image of my grandmother at forty, framed in shiny bronze seems to point the way to something old fashioned but of immense value that maybe I can teach someone in these words.

When I look at my grandmother’s picture, the nearest I can remember her looking like this is when I was 12. One day she was visiting and in her usual manner, she pointed to the windows and said, “We’re going to clean these.”

At 12 I had no interest in doing anything like cleaning and this was the middle of summer. My father was out at teaching summer school and my mother was working at the VA, so from 9 am to my parents got home at 4 I was my grandmother and grandfather’s errand boy. Where is this? Or how about this? And that is what I did.

Today, my Grandfather had taken an interest in my father’s workshop and he was in the backyard about 20 feet from the covered deck. My Grandmother’s interest were the largest windows in the house, the back sealed deck. With a wave of her hand I had been instructed to go outside on the deck and wait. From left right, my parents had installed 30 foot windows that curved up to the back of the house. My eyes widened at the thought of washing those windows and that’s when My grandmother brought in a huge bucket of water and began pouring a healthy dose of vinegar into the bucket.

“Why are your eyes so wide?” my grandmother said. She began to dip the large mophead in the very pungent water and to soak it thoroughly. “Answer me?”

Um, “ I said but knew that wouldn’t go over, so I blurted out something, “Those windows are big.”

“Big?” My grandmother had a way disliking most things I said and even now she looked like her only grandson was mentally deficient, so she just shook her head.

“I mean I uh, yeah we can wash those.”